The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City with Paul French

A major new account of China’s Last Emperor – the spellbinding story now told in full for the first time.

About the event

Join us in our beautiful State Apartments for a fascinating talk with Paul French, a New York Times bestselling author and leading expert on Chinese history. Paul studied and worked in China for over 20 years, living in both Shanghai and Beijing, and brings this deep experience to his latest work, The Last Emperor of China, which highlights the previously overlooked stories of the women who surrounded the emperor and dispels long-held myths about his relationship with his wife. Central to this new research is the archive of Wanrong’s tutor, Isabel Ingram, material offered to Paul by Ingram’s family and previously unknown to historians in China or the West, which sheds significant new light on the royal couple’s final two years in the Forbidden City, revealing a far more loving relationship than is usually portrayed.

Nearly 40 years after Bernardo Bertolucci’s blockbuster The Last Emperor, Paul revisits this iconic story with fresh evidence and a modern perspective. As China continues to grow and assert itself as a global superpower, audiences are increasingly interested in its past  and Paul explores what relevance, if any, the lives of Puyi and Wanrong hold for understanding China today.

Additional information

Enter via London Gate

This event is eligible for our 20% ticket bundle discount.

Book tickets to three or more different events across the festival and you can save 20%. Tickets must be purchased in the same transaction and the discount will automatically be applied within the basket.

About the speaker

Paul French is a bestselling author and critically acclaimed historian from London, who lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book Midnight in Peking was a New York Times bestseller and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He received the Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association Dagger award for nonfiction. City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir received much praise with The Economist calling him a ‘champion storyteller’. His most recent book is the acclaimed Wallis Simpson: Her Lotus Year in 1920s China.